I was sick over the past week. It’s my fault. I am weak against the seemingly inexhaustible Halloween candy and children’s germs from the birthday party. I was so sick, I told Jay that if I felt that way every day of my life, I would rather die. I get really dramatic when I’m ill. I’m hardly ever laid up, and it’s very easy for me to lapse into believing I am invincible, until I am stricken.
Mortality never hit home as hard as it did when I became a mother. Spending nine months nurturing my growing offspring inside my belly gave me a lot of time to think about life. I am awestruck at the mystery of it all, how it all begins with a couple of frisky people following their natural urges, how one moment one isn’t and another moment one is. I wonder what it’s like to be born. The fear of leaving what is known and cozy and safe seems similar for birth as it is for death.
When I was in labor, I was afraid of the pain. I pushed hard, but would stop as soon as I felt a sharp pain splitting me open. My midwife had to remind me that I needed to make it hurt more, that pain is what I was going for. I wonder what mental leap we have to make to let go of our bodies in death. I suppose that in suffering, to feel nothing is a comfort. Perhaps the trick, again, is to take the suffering to its climactic end, make it hurt more, just like giving birth.
That’s really thought provoking…thanks.
… er, what I mean is it gets me thinking about too many things and I just gave a mild platitude, “thought provoking”…
for a while I was involved with a community of psychics who were into channeling, etc., and it seemed like one of the biggest problems after death is boredom. Most spirits want to get into bodies and can’t wait to incarnate again, to feel things and make contact with other beings from inside a body, get information, have experiences…
That would really suck for someone who doesn’t believe in life after death, wouldn’t it? To awaken after one thinks it’s all over, and be eternally bored. Especially if one has already spent way too long living life in boredom, to encounter boredom again in death has got to be a slap in the face. And what about those freaks who thought they were going to get some sort of reward or punishment after death – eternal happiness or eternal damnation? How disappointed they must be that all they get is nothing. Then it’s back to the sensory world again, it pulls us like a magnet, because no matter how bored we may think we are in life, the feeling of pain or pleasure must be better than nothing at all. How sucky for those who lived their lives denying their bodies the perverted desires of their minds.